Smart Meters are worse than you think

I recently learned the hard way what’s happening with smart meters in Europe. The same type of smart meter they’re using here in France has already been deployed in many EU countries.

Mostly, we hear only about the negative health effects of wireless smart meters, but the ones here only send data back over the power lines.

Nevertheless, it turns out smart meters here are still being used to pretty much screw many over.

In short, smart meters may mean less juice to power stuff, and more frequent main breaker trips as people exceed their (now reduced) capacity.

Expanded explanation after the vid:

The Olden Days

In the olden days, dumb meters measured real power consumed – in kWh (kilowatt-hours). One kWh is when you use 1000W of power for 1 hour.

Let’s say you subscribed for, say, 9kW. Practically speaking, this meant you had a main breaker for 230V at 45A, which is actually 230 x 45 = 10,350W, or 10.35 kW. But your subscription to the power company was still called “9kW”.

A couple of years ago, bills changed… Suddenly, the “9kW” was written as “9kVA” – but nothing actually changed on the customer’s end.

Enter the Smart Meter!

So, these smart meters now have a circuit breaker built in. Your old main breaker is now useless since the smart meter is sitting between it and and the power from the electric company.

These new meters are also programmed for the 9 kVA value. Practically, this means that the max current you can pull is:

Is there an upside?

On the plus side, smart meters do record and send daily consumption to the power company, including how much power you use at what time.

The inclusion of the main breaker and the ability to communicate with the power company also means that service activation or deactivation can be done remotely. No more waiting for The Guy to come out and turn power on/off when you move.

Also, amperage upgrades can also be done remotely now without sending a tech out – most of the time.

These smart meters are being deployed all over Europe as far as I can tell. I’m not sure if the same shenanigans are happening in North America, Australia, Asia, etc. but I wouldn’t put it past them.

Green Nonsense

Finally, let’s consider the reasons we are given by the electric company as to why these meters are so much better. The main one is that it’s all about “going green”. Electric cars are mentioned, naturally.

Well, let’s think about this: Electric cars suck a TON of juice to charge their batteries. If everyone has less capacity with a smart meter, and they have an electric car, they’ll need to jack up their service and pay the power company more money.

Right now, if everyone in the world ditched their old car for an electric one, power grids the world over would literally collapse. Gasoline and diesel are extremely energy-dense fuels. A simple calculation you can do is 1 hp (horsepower) = 746 W. So, a 150hp engine outputs a peak power of 111.9 kW. That’s a lot higher than your 9kW / 9kVA subscription to the electric company, no?

But, but… solar!

Right. A modern standard-size solar panel outputs about 250W. Four panels will output 1kW.

That’s in good light, with an efficient inverter… That could work to power our Electric Car World, because the total energy output gatherable by solar panels on Earth is pretty darn high. But solar is still pretty expensive, and most people don’t have solar power.

In any case, I think you get the point. The idea that smart meters will save us all and make us “Green” is pretty much a marketing gimmick so that you’ll be happy to pay your electric utility more money for a higher capacity subscription.

What is wrong with the way we live today,a fuse backs up circuit breakers, Why? Because circuit beakers fail if an overcurrent or an overload positions exists. If the condition that caused the circuit breaker to trip is not rectified this same breaker can be reset until it loses it”s factory calibration. A fuse is a one time protection, it cannot be reset it must be replaced only after the problem is corrected. If you don”t have gold backing a currency the fiat currency can only be kicked down the road so many times until the underlying problem is fixed. The trouble is the damage that is caused when problems are allowed to be shunted until they can”t anymore and then it is 1929 all over instead of 1921 when a depression lasted only a year because the problems weren”t ignored. DT

Smart meters have several large advantages for the power company and consumer.
First off, the power company can lay off or reassign a large number of people who walk through your yard to read the meter. This leads to less trucks, fuel, and dog bites…lower cost and less intrusive.
Second, smart meters give data continuously, allowing for load shifting and more acurate plant design. The old meters were only read every several months and only estimated in the other months. It is very hard to use a computer to maximize plant efficiency or find losses if you do not have data on useage that is accurate.
Utilities don’t generally deploy expensive technologies unless they save money in the long run. Take away smart meters and both the utility and you will pay more for same service.
Also if you are worried about RF exposure, then leave the city, stop holding your cellphone to your head, and get rid of your wifi router. Our typical rf exposure is far above what your smart meter puts out. Most of this is just irrational fear of the unknown…
Except for your cell phone, it causes brain cancer due to high transmit power and close proximity to the organ (Brain). Might also caution against using bluetooth remote while phone is in pants pocket. Again keep it away from valued soft tissue organs. 🤔 😲
Great site Scotti, thanx

Yeah. Unfortunately, here in the Land of Stinky Cheese, the power company decided to try to screw consumers out of 500 million euros plus.

It was related not to the meters themselves, but to some “fancy financing” where we pay less in the short term, but fork over more in the long run to pay for smart meters that were supposed to be “free”. Fortunately, they were caught.

So, ideally everyone would have lower costs, but alas those corporate types love to squeeze the rest of us.

Thought I would throw my tenant’s problem regards Smart Meters (SM) into the mix, in the hope someone could maybe suggest what is going on?

May 2016 – tenants switch to E.org – no problem.
March 2017 – had Top-Up via App PAYG SM installed and immediately the RCD/fusebox starts tripping intermittently – every few hours, every day, after few days.
I contacted E.org and they stated that SM not cause switches to trip, fault is fusebox. Accept what they say.

Cause???!!!
Customer Top Up – when tenant tops up via app and then credit shows up on phone then RCD immediately trips.
Supplier reading – when E.org do On Demand reading from their end RCD immediately trips.

E.org change SM Oct 2018 and tripping now worse. BG check after SM change and state domestic side and RCD all ok.
E.org state that fault is RCD as have changed SM. BG believe it is SM. I am between rock and hard place.
Requested E.org replace SM with Dumb meters, but will only do if I pay.
Now starting case with Energy Ombudsman… And tenants’ life not good as now 3/4 times a day have to reset RCD. Any ideas/advice?

Wow. So, my first hunch would be NOT the SM because of course it should not cause this problem. But if the tenants + electricians checked out everything on the premises, then we can probably safely assume it’s not a problem on the domestic side of things.

What sticks out to me is that if the RCD immediately trips whenever a Customer Top Up or Supplier remote reading is done, then there MUST be something wrong with the meter – even though that makes no sense because it shouldn’t happen.

Thing is, smart meters are like all other fancy electronics: they are frequently not designed very well. It’s entirely possible that there is some flaw in the SMs that only manifests in certain conditions – like when the Top Up service is added! I’ve seen weirder things, believe me. They are often very difficult to track down.

If everything has been changed/checked, and the problem started with the Top Up on the SM, then logic would dictate that’s where to look. What should happen is that E.org send out an engineer to dig into the problem. Since that probably won’t happen without the intervention of God, the Queen, or some other higher power, I’d either eliminate the Top Up thingy, or switch to a dumb meter.